From Consent to Advice and Consent: Cyclical Constraints within the District Court Appointment Process

Abstract:     
This study seeks to understand longstanding structural changes in the executive-senate relationships that govern the judicial appointment process. Utilizing a new source of data that comprises District Court appointments from 1901 through 2006, the analysis models the duration of selection and confirmation events to find evidence of inter-branch constraint or influence. Temporal variance and heteroskedasticity in these measures suggests that the last century of appointment activity can be divided into separate four regimes that reflect a repeating cycle of executive independence and senatorial constraint, which in turn helps integrate existing accounts of change and conflict within the appointment of federal judges.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 43

Keywords: judicial appointments, district court

JEL Classification: K40

working papers series